CS:GO - Overwatch Guide

This guide will contain necessary information over Overwatch in Counter Strike: Global Offensive.

Introduction

This guide will help you to understand what Overwatch in CS:GO is, and how to operate it properly. Although this guide is welcome for everyone, it is advisable for beginners or newbies to the game as most of the information provided here will be already known by most players of CS:GO.

Requirements

The Overwatch system is unfortunately not provided for every players who own CS:GO, but rather have a set requirement for a player must achieve. It is to restrict players who have just gotten their game accessing the Overwatch and inputting false verdicts to a case.

From the official Overwatch FAQ:
How do investigators get selected?
Investigators are selected based on their CS:GO activity (competitive wins, account age, hours played, Skill Group, low report count, etc.) and, if applicable, prior Overwatch participation level and score (a function of their accuracy as an investigator). Community members who maintain both a high level of activity and high Overwatch scores will receive more cases to elect to participate in.


It is unclear what the specific requirements are, but the CS:GO community reports you require:

• Minimum of 150 Competitive Wins
  
• Rank Greater Than Silver in Competitive Ranks
  
• Clean Account (No VAC Bans)
  
• Low Report Counts

Again, this is just an estimation made by the community, and it is entirely possible that you will be accessed earlier or later than the given requirements above.

Basic Information / Operating Overwatch

If you are given access to the Overwatch and classified as an investigator, a blue menu will appear above the in-game store menu. From here, you will download an evidence of a case that has been given to you from the system.

After the download has been completed, you will given a different button where you can review the evidence.


Overwatch will provide 8 random, but consecutive rounds of a player that has been flagged as a possible cheater / hacker. This specific player will be named as 'The Suspect' and it is the only player you can view in the demo provided. The other 9 players in the game will be given an anonymous names, and no information about any of the players (eg. ranks) will be given to you, including the Suspect. The Overwatch operates on CSGO Demo UI, which allows access to the scoreboard (default button 'Tab') and the Demo UI ('Shift+2') allowing you to control time and playback speed of the demo. The basic features such as X-Ray, map overlay and other feature will be provided as well. If you do not know or wish to know more about operating CSGO Demo, it is recommended to familiarize by physically accesing them in-game, or to read a guide about it in Steam or elsewhere.

Overwatch will also generate a sound, whenever the suspect earns a kill.


The goal you have to accomplish in the end is to determine either this 'Suspect' is using any form of hacks and / or external programms, or not. These suspects were flagged as a cheater or a hacker because they have been recieveing high number of report rate from players in both short and long term, or has shown an unusual pattern from one of their games (eg. scoring near-impossible amount of kills). Players who have previously marked as 'not-guilty' can still be shown in Overwatch, and all of the cases together are randomized then given the the community 'investigators'.

After 8 given rounds, you will be prompted back to main menu, but this time with a form you have to submit. You will be given four criterias to mark about the suspect, either with 'Insufficient Evidence' or 'Evident Beyond a Resonable Doubt'. You also have an option to postpone the judgement, so that you can view the evidence again, or to leave the case unaswered. The four criterias you have to judge from are Vision Hacks, Aim Hacks, Other External Hacks and Grieveing

Vision Hacks

Vision hack as its name suggests, is any hack that gives a player an advantage through a visual hints or traces. The most famous example of such hack is a wallhack, where a player can see through walls to know where the enemies are located at and where they are heading towards to.

Players with vision assistance will often look through walls or deployed smoke grenade to determine the locations of every player in the opposite sides, and hunt those players down by either rushing directly at them or flanking them from unexpected positions. Using X-Ray feature given by CSGO Demo will greatly help to determine weather or not the player is using vision hacks.

These players also tends to not check any corners while clearing out a space. For example Inferno A bombsite retake as CT requires high level of team coordination and gamesense as the bombsite has many spots you have to check to find the Terrorists who are defending the bomb. Players with vision assistance will ignore all of this and will directly find the positions of defending terrorists nonetheless. These two evidences increase the chance of the player using any sort of vision assitance.

However as an Overwatch investigator you have to consider the facts that the teammates of the suspect could have known the positions of the terrorists, or the enemies were marked on the minimap from the suspect's perspective. As Overwatch will not show any evidence of communication made in-game, it is advised to be cautious and not mark the suspect as cheater just because the suspect somehow knew the positions. When these kind of situations continuously happens, then it is safe to mark the suspect of using a vision assistance.

Aim Hacks

Aim hacks is any sort of assistance where the player gains advantages in duels or battles by having better aim than the enemy player(s). Aim hacks include, but not limited to triggerbots, aimbots, spray controlling, and much more.

Players with aim assistance are less obvious and harder to find evidence of than any other hacks, simply it is less obvious, and players are more subtle of using their hacks, hiding their evidences of using aim hacks.

Of course, there are players who makes clear evidence that they are hacking and they do not care about it. One of evidence is spinbot, where a player constantly moves their camera in every direction imaginable. If you have any motion sickness, then it is advised to watch out for the players with this hack. These players constantly spins, to combat any potential hackers in the OTHER team, so that the enemy hacker cannot get an easy headshot on the suspect.

The usual suspects with aim hacks will have high or even insane percentage headshot accuracy within a game. These aim bots allows players to get a headshot without actually having to aim at players, hence the name 'aimbot'. It is not unusal to see the suspect with aim hacks with a scout for its capability of one bullet headshotting a player, and it is cheap to afford.

Triggerbot is an another type of aim assistance hack where the player automatically fires as soon as any enemy walks into their crosshair. Of course, any player will fire their gun as soon as they see an enemy in their sight, but with aim hack the enemy will be shut down by only one / couple of bullets into their head.

Jumping, running, or any ridiculous actions to get a kill does NOT necessarily counts as aim assitance.

Aim assistance hacks are usually harder to spot, so it is highly recommended to use CSGO Demo UI whenever you suspect the suspect to have any type of aim hacks.

Other External Hacks

Other External Hacks are any sort of assistance that does not involve with vision or aim hacks. In CS:GO there are many hacks that helps a player in every possible aspects. It can be a movement hack such as bhop scripping, or informative hack such as knowing the HP of every member in the enmy team. If you think that the suspect is gaining advantage through a hack that is not a vision or aim hack, then it is safe to report the suspect for using other external hacks.

Bhopping is a movement technique in CS where the player can gain higher movement speed than the default walking speed with knife pulled out (which is the highest default speed). Bhopping requires a player to jump, and strafe whilst in the air to gain speed, and repeat the process by jumping and strafing again. It is not uncommon to see players hitting bhops in their game, so be cautious about reporting a player for bhop scripting. Players with bhop script will CONSTANTLY maintain their speed below 300units, which is the cap for any speed movement. If reaching, or going over 300units, the player will automatically lose speed. Bhop scripts will allow to maintain speed below the speed limit. Player with bhop script will also be jumping constantly with very bad strafes, or no strafes at all.

Grieving

Grieving as many game community knows, is any act by a player that ruins the purpose of the game. It can be simply by teamkilling a teammate, blocking a teammate from accessing certain areas, or constantly commiting suicide in maps such as Vertigo.

Grieving is more sort of an ethical choice you have to make. There are no 'requirements' the suspect needs to achieve to be reported as grieving, but it is more about if you think if the suspect is grieving or not.

Submitting Verdicts / Rewards

After viewing 8 random consecutive rounds, you will be given a form to input your verdict about the suspect. You can either mark as 'Insufficient Evidence', or 'Evidence beyond Reasonable Doubt' for aim hacks, vision hacks, other hacks, and grieving. You can always choose to postpone your verdict.

After you have sent your verdict, the case will be reviewed by several other investigators, and the verdicts which has been made by the majority will go through.

If the suspect has been marked as any type of hacker from the majority of the verdicts, the suspect will instantly recieve a game ban, where consequences works similar to VAC. The suspect will recieve a permanant ban, which is most likely will not dissolve without an appeal from the suspect.

If the suspect has been marked as a griefer, he will recieve 30+ days of game ban. Whilst in this periodic game ban, the player cannot join any matchmaking, and cannot access to majority of steam features.

If the suspect has been marked as innocent, nothing will happen to the player. However, it is possible that the case will be rerolled into the overwatch pool for further investigation.

You will recieve a notice on the bar where you access overwatch cases from stating you have earned extra xp for correct verdict. You will only recieve this and the extra xp if you have submitted a correct verdict, where the majority agrees with you. This xp can be claimed by simply joining any official gamemodes in CS:GO. Nothing special will happen if you happen to sumbit a wrong verdict (by not receiving this notice), however your reputation as an investigator might fall. There is however no way to see what your reputation is as an overwatch investgator.

Conclusion

Overwatch is a smart and effecient to catch any hackers and cheaters that has not been (or yet has to be) marked from official Valve Anti-Cheat. The more players and more effort is given into overwatch, the more potential hackers will be banned from the game. Of course this does not mean you should spend hours or days just doing overwatch, but give it a go whenever you have time or you just feel like doing one or more.

Here are other links you can visit to learn more about Overwatch:
Official CS:GO Overwatch FAQ
Other Steam Guides

Suggestions and improvements for this guide are welcomed at the comment section.

[ville]

"No VAC Bans" is false, I've had Overwatch for a long time now and I have a ban on record

[kano]

ok